This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchelor.

From Malcolm Holine Conference of President's major American Jewish organizations, my colleague,

and we're joined by our colleague Aaron Zelen of the Washington Institute to help us understand this group inside the Syrian rebellion.

They're said to be jihadists.

They're said to be an alliance of many different groups coming from backgrounds that are either local or transnational.

There's one man that is featured in all the reporting,

Abu Mahabha Jolani, that's a nom de guerre. He is a Syrian, I believe. However, he has been associated in the past with both al-Qaeda and ISIS. In fact, I'm told that HGS, or what it said, what it was

previously, dates from the divide, the split, the breakup between al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Aaron, a very good evening to you.

What can we learn about these jihadists?

Are they a different flavor or the same old cutthroats?

Good evening to you.

Thanks for having me.

It's a very complicated issue in question.

It is true that Hey, at Tahrir Hashm, or HTS, this main group that's led us offensive,

had a prior history where they were connected first to the Islamic State from 2011 to 2013 and then from

al-Qaeda from 2013 to 2016. However, over the last eight and a half years, we've seen this

transition where they disavowed all that in the past. And they've mainly focused on fighting the

Assad regime.

They still remain to be, you know, these conservative Islamists, but they aren't interested in, say, terrorist attacks or terrorist attacks abroad to be more specific.

At the same time, there remains foreign fighters within its group, a small percentage, but there are. So it is a complicated picture in many regards. It's not sort of your old school thinking related to like ISIS or Al Qaeda,

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